Postmortem: Banshee Boss on Who Died (Literally and Figuratively), What's Ahead in Season 3

Saturday

Mar 15, 2014 at 6:30 AM

[WARNING: The following story contains major spoilers from the Season 2 finale ofBanshee. Read at your own risk.]Our ears are still ringing from all the gunshots.Banshee's Season 2 finale went out with multiple bangs as Lucas (Antony Starr) and Carrie ...

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[WARNING: The following story contains major spoilers from the Season 2 finale of Banshee. Read at your own risk.]Our ears are still ringing from all the gunshots.Banshee's Season 2 finale went out with multiple bangs as Lucas (Antony Starr) and Carrie (Ivana Milicevic) stormed the small New York church where an infirmed Rabbit (Ben Cross) was hiding. Although they made quick work of several of Rabbit's henchmen, Carrie and Lucas soon found themselves on the wrong end of many automatic weapons. Banshee finale: Will Lucas survive his "reckoning" with Rabbit?Running low on ammo and shorter on time, Lucas ultimately decided to draw the gunmen's bullets to himself while Carrie made a run for it, but just as he does, Job (Hoon Lee) and Fat Al came to the rescue with a hail of machine gun fire all their own. With the church covered in blood, Carrie and Lucas found Rabbit in the courtyard. Carrie told her father goodbye for the final time and walked away as Lucas watched the man who betrayed him and sent him to prison for 15 years take his own life.With Rabbit dead, Carrie and Lucas returned to Banshee, where the body count kept rising. In order to destroy Lucas' case against her uncle Kai Prcotor (Ulrich Thomsen), Recbecca (Lili Simmons) seduced and, after a dangerous fight in his office, killed Alex Longshadow (Anthony Ruvivar). And even though Emmett (Demetrius Grosse) and his wife escaped from Banshee, they were gunned down by the associates of the skinheads Emmett beat to a pulp earlier in the season.Fortunately, the episode had its lighter moments, including Lucas returning home to find Siobhan (Trieste Kelly Dunn) still waiting for him. But the season ended with one final shocker: Deva (Ryann Shane) strolled into Lucas' office and revealed that she knows Lucas is her father. Winter Preview: Get scoop on your favorite returning showsHow will Lucas react? Will he give the relationship with Siobhan an honest shot or will he and Carrie find a way back to each other? And will Proctor and Rebecca be coming after Lucas for revenge? TVGuide.com turned to executive producer Greg Yaitanes to answer all those questions. Plus: Why did Emmett have to die?You told us this episode felt like a series finale. Besides wrapping up the Rabbit story, what else made you feel that way?Greg Yaitanes: If we've done our job right, you actually should be asking yourself, "Oh my God, is Lucas going to die? Are they going to kill off the lead character?" There have been other precedents set for that. We used that audience expectation and subverted it with one of the great entrances, as Job and Fat Al come save the day. It's such a fantastic and emotional moment because we put a finale to the Carrie-Lucas relationship. In a way, Carrie and Lucas die in the church in terms of their relationship, but their physical selves return to Banshee. So, it's very much a new chapter.What do you think it says about Lucas that he was willing to sacrifice himself after all this time for Carrie? Had he just made peace and was perhaps ready for it all to be over?Yaitanes: The Lucas we met in Episode 1 definitely would not have been willing to sacrifice himself. I think this shows how much not only the character but also the show itself has matured. It's a big deal to come to the realization that you're the one that brought all this upon everybody and it's up to you to finish it. If you truly love somebody, then you really have to let them seek their happiness. The only way to do that was to let her escape, which is what happened 15 years ago. It really was a true act of selflessness. That to me is one of my favorite moments in the finale.So, the Carrie and Lucas ship has sailed for good? Yaitanes: We're already several scripts into Season 3 right now. They are in different places. They're not where you would expect. No one will expect exactly where all these characters wind up a few weeks after the finale.That relationship will have to continue in some way now that Deva knows Lucas is her father, right?Greg Yaitanes: If there was any part of Lucas that was thinking of ever leaving Banshee, now there's a direct reason why he needs to stay. I think we'll see that Deva is a definite pull on why Lucas is still in Banshee when we find him in Season 3.Will Lucas try to make his relationship with Siobhan work next season?Yaitanes: That's the hard part of looking over your shoulder your whole life. Siobhan and Lucas' relationship is built on a foundation of lies. When you have something that's so shaky as you build it up, it's going to crumble underneath you. In our case, the threat of that is always out there. As much as he cares - his emotions are genuine - can he ever trust her to reveal the real story? These will be things that we'll be looking at next year. But he's in a very, very difficult place in a relationship because every day it goes on, he's further away from being able to fix it and come clean about what's happening. So how deep can you go if somebody doesn't truly know who you are? Photo Gallery: Check out bad guys we root forSiobhan isn't the only deputy with questions. Brock (Matt Servitto) dug a little deeper, but then kind of gave Lucas props for his work on Proctor. Is Brock satisfied for the time being or will he keep digging?Yaitanes: It's a philosophical question I brought up at the beginning of the season and something that is definitely in season three: If you're a guy pretending to be a sheriff but you're doing the job of sheriff, are you really pretending? Ultimately, Lucas is doing the job and getting it done. That said, I don't think anyone will expect where we will enter the Brock-Lucas relationship at the top of Season 3.Switching gears, we saw Rebeecca take bold action to save Proctor. Why was it important for you to have her kill Alex Longshadow?Yaitanes: I would say that if Rebecca was following the path of Michael Corleone's journey in the first Godfather movie, you're going to see the soul transformation in Season 3. She's crossed that line; she's not a beginner anymore. We'll see how Proctor brings her further into that world in Season 3.Did he ultimately want that for her? Or did he want to somehow protect her from this lifestyle?Yaitanes: He mentions in Episode 6 that he has no kids. So, Rebecca, in a way, needs to be the one to inherit what he's building here and [she is] why he's doing it. I think he has unrealistic expectations of where he saw Rebecca's involvement. You can't keep someone pure inside of such a dirty business. This is not what he wanted for her, but now that she's here, she has to be ready.There was a great scene between Proctor and his mother in the penultimate episode. How will that moment change Proctor in the future?Yaitanes: That's a good thing to pick up on. There's two really interesting pieces of information in Season 2 that carry into Season 3 when it comes to Proctor. In Episode 8, Lucas finds the secret room of Proctor's. He's built this Amish prayer part of the armory where he can go in the darkest corner of his basement and worship in secret. So, we know [the church] is a part of him that is deeply engrained and deeply connected as much as he throws it in the face of his father. But then also, his mother comes to visit and absolve him. Those two things are going to collide and be the catalyst for part of Proctor's journey in Season 3.Check out photos of the Banshee castNow that Proctor is out of jail, is he Lucas' primary threat in Season 3?Yaitanes: The threat is everywhere for Lucas. Obviously, we will see more of Chayton [Geno Segers], and we know what a physically powerful foe that is. If anybody had any doubts, we wanted to remind you of that with the death match that took place in New Orleans at the end of Episode 10. And you've got Proctor, who definitely has a very serious ax to grind. And yet there's still room for threat where we don't expect them. So, Lucas is by no means safe. I doubt many viewers will cry over the death of Rabbit or Alex Longshadow. Is that why you ripped our hearts out by murdering Emmett and his wife?Yaitanes: It's a function of [the idea] that people rarely get out of Banshee alive. You can come and go all you want, but the gravity of the town is a powerful thing. Episode 8 was titled "Evil for Evil." Just because Emmett exacted revenge, it did not absolve or protect Emmett from a consequence. And when hate builds on hate - Emmett did the right thing but he didn't do a good thing - that's met with his demise. That's a deeply sad ending to the character, but it was an important ending to that character because I think it demonstrated that this is the world that Banshee lives in. People should know when something happens, it's not just the end of the story. That will be no more apparent than about midway through the season next year.Can you tell us anything about new characters coming to town next season?Yaitanes: Bonner [Reg E. Cathey] is putting the pieces together, so it may be only a matter of time before he descends on Banshee. Jason Hood stole money and hid out in Banshee and a hit man came after him, but that hit man was hired by somebody else. It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that stuff is still hanging out there that may follow. Just because Jason Hood's out of the picture doesn't mean what Jason Hood did is out of the picture.Similarly, should we expect any lingering ghosts from the Rabbit story to manifest themselves?Yaitanes: Now that it's fully come together, it's truly put to bed. The Rabbit story and everything that goes with it is definitely behind us. The great thing was that we were given a little glimpse into Lucas' old life when he visited New York, and we introduced some new characters. It would be nice to explore them a little further. Season 3 will very much explore the aftermath of what happened in New Yorkm but Rabbit's definitely out of the picture.What did you think of the finale?

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